Part 163 (1/2)
”Do you need to take so many of the fit men to ride out and bring d.u.c.h.ess Floria back?” Olivier de la Marche questioned.
Ash, on a borrowed Visigoth mare, grinned down at him from her war saddle. ”Yup,” she said cheerfully.
”You are taking the better part of three hundred men. To meet Bajezet's five hundred mounted Janissaries.”
Ash glanced back at the hundred and ten men under the Lion Azure standard, and Lacombe's Burgundians. ”We don't know that Bajezet's Turks won't turn round and ride straight back to Mehmet. I'm paranoid. Peace has broken out - but I'm still paranoid. Look at it out there. No food. Dark, over the border. Breakdown of law. It's going to be years before this country's quiet. How would you feel if I lost her to some roaming gang of bandits?”
The big Burgundian nodded. ”I grant you that.”
Over these four days, dozens of men and women from nearby burned villages and towns have trickled in to Dijon; as the news spreads out across the countryside. Some from caves in the limestone rocks, some from the wildwood; all hungry, far from all honest.
He added, ”And I grant you, the men that bore the weight of the battle for our d.u.c.h.ess should have the honour of seeing her home to us.”
Any day now, I can be done with this 'Lioness' c.r.a.p. Just as soon as we start planning a southern campaign.
”But - her?” De la Marche looked at the Faris, where the Visigoth woman rode between two of Giovanni Petro's men.
”I prefer to have her where I can see her. She used to command this lot, remember? Okay, it's over, but we don't take chances.”
Not that I haven't taken steps to encourage her co-operation.
On the edge of the crowd of citizens around the open north-east gate, she caught sight of a man in priest's robes: Fernando del Guiz. His escort of Lion billmen flanked him in a business-like manner. He lifted a hand in blessing -although whether to his current or past wife was not apparent.
Ash glanced away, up at the sky. ”There aren't many hours of light. We won't get to them before tomorrow, at the earliest - if we find 'em that easy! Expect me in three, maybe four days. Messire Olivier, since the Visigoths are being so generous with their food and drink and firewood - do you think we could have a celebration?”
”Captain-General, Pucelle, truly,” Olivier de la Marche said, and he laughed. ”If only to prove the truth of what I have always said: employ a mercenary and he will eat you out of hearth and home.”
Ash rode out over the eastern bridge, pa.s.sing below the Visigoth gunners camped up on the rough heights. She waved, touched a spur to the mare, and rocked in the creaking saddle, moving up the column.
Cold s.n.a.t.c.hed the air from her mouth. She acknowledged, in a cloud of white breath, the new lance-leaders as she pa.s.sed: Ludmilla with Pieter Tyrrell and Jan-Jacob Clovet riding with her, instead of Katherine Hammell; Vitteleschi marching at the head of Price's billmen; and Euen Huw's third-in-command, Tobias, leading his lance. Thomas Rochester rode led by his sergeant, Elias; bandages over his blind right eye, and a covering of forge-black steel over the still-weeping hole in his face. Other lance-leaders - Ned Mowlett, Henri van Veen - looked newly serious, newly senior.
The faces change. The company goes on.
With scouts out before and behind and to the flanks, Ash's force rode out of Dijon, into the deserted hamlets and strip-fields, through outflung spurs of the ancient wildwood, into the wasteland.
”Do we know which way Bajezet went?” she asked Robert Anselm. ”I wouldn't like to try getting across the Alps, they're too f.u.c.ked to even think of crossing!”
”He said they'd ride north, through the Duchy,” Anselm rumbled. ”Then east; Franche-Comte, over the border to Longeau in Haute-Marne, then northwest through Lorraine. Depending on how they could live off the land. He said if they had no word the war was over, he'd ride towards Strasbourg, then cut across to the east, and hope to run into the Turks coming west across the Danube.”
”How far do the messengers say they got?”
”Over the border. Into the dark. They're on their way back from the east.” Anselm grinned. ”And if neither of us is lost, we might even be on the same road!”
Towards the end of the day, flakes of snow began to fall from a yellowing sky.
”Make it as hard as you like,” she murmured under her breath as she rode, with the icy wind finding gaps between bevor and visor and numbing her face.
'HARD, YES, COLD-'
'WINTER-COLD, WORLD-COLD-'
'-UNTIL WINTER COVERS YOU, COVERS ALL THE WORLD!'
She heard a note of panic in their voices.
Ash thought, but did not say aloud, We've won. You can turn Christendom into a frozen wasteland, but we've won. Leofric's Caliph. We sign this treaty, and we leave for the south - we're coming for you.
She rode east and north, among the clink of bridles in the bitter snowy air, smiling.
The following day, after much frustrated wandering in snow-bound featureless countryside, Janissary outriders encountered Lion Azure scouts a mile outside what Ash found - as they were escorted into it - to be a burned and deserted village. Diminis.h.i.+ng smoke still rose from the ruins of the manor house and church. Snow covered the hill-slopes, that had been covered in vines.
With visibility closing in, she rode with Anselm and Angelotti and the Burgundian Lacombe, over a frozen stream by a shattered stone bridge. Perhaps two of the eleven wattle-and-daub houses still stood, thatch weighed down under snow; and the Janissaries led them into a surprisingly neat military camp of tents around the intact buildings and a mill.
Two men came out of the high, half-timbered building. A man in armour, with a Blue Boar standard; another man taking off his helmet to disclose sandy hair and a lined face, that split into a broad grin as he saw her liveries.
”She's safe,” he called up.
Ash dismounted, gave her helmet to Rickard, and went forward to meet John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. She said, ”It's peace.”
”Your rider told us.” His faded blue eyes narrowed. ”And a bad field, before it?”
”I'm beginning to think there are no good fields,” she said, and at his acknowledging nod, added, ”Florian?”
”You will find 'brother d.i.c.kon' by the mill's hearth,” John de Vere murmured, grinning. ”G.o.d's teeth, madam! An Earl of England is not to be shoved aside like a peasant! What's the matter with the woman? You'd swear she'd never seen a d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy before!”
The snow ceased in the night. The next morning, the fifth day of January, they rode south-west, in column, as soon as there was light.
Riding knee by knee with Florian, she told the cloaked surgeon-d.u.c.h.ess, ”Gelimer's dead,” and let herself be drawn, skilfully, into what details of fighting and death of friends Florian might want to know. She found herself answering questions about the wounded: how Visigoth doctors had treated Katherine Hammell, Thomas Rochester, others.
”It's peace,” Ash finished. ”At least until they a.s.sa.s.sinate Leofric! That should give us a few months. Until spring.”
”It'll take years. Recovering from this war.” Florian dug the folds of her cloak in around her thighs, attempting to s.h.i.+eld her body from a wind that is colder now that the snow has stopped. ”I can't be their d.u.c.h.ess. Dispose of the Ferae Natura Machinae, and I'm done.”
The Visigoth mare wuffled, softly, at snow clogging her hooves. Ash reached forward to pat the sleek neck under the blue caparisons.
”You won't stay in Burgundy?”
”I don't have your sense of responsibility.”
”'Responsibility'-?”
Florian nodded ahead, at Lacombe, and Marie's men. ”Once you've commanded them, you start to feel responsible.”
”Aw, what c.r.a.p!”
”Sure,” Florian said. She might have been smiling. ”Sure.”
Two miles down the track, in a valley where the ancient wildwood that covered the hills had been burned black and snow-blotched halfway up the slopes, Ash reined in at the sight of a scout coming back. A long-boned boy in a padded jack.
”Let that man through.”